I’ve always been a playwright first, sound designer second, but as I work in podcasting and radio drama, I’m finding the sound design more important than ever. This carries over to theatre in the real world. The more abstract your visual design, the more important your aural design is in terms of creating those imaginary worlds. And there are things you don’t notice until they’re missing. For a good example of that, check out another of my favorite podcast series, the Memory Palace by Nate DiMeo, about the time when Niagara stopped falling.

I understand. Sometimes, it’s hard to notice individual elements like sound or lighting compared to sets & costumes, writing & acting. Maybe peers could vote on specialized elements–it seems to work for the other major entertainment awards.

And sure, I’ve seen a lot of “who cares about the Tonys?” comments. “It’s not the best of theatre, it’s the best of a six-block radius of a single city.” Or “it’s just a regional awards show that happens to be on tv.” Which is fine. You don’t want to watch, don’t. You want to ignore them? Go right ahead.

But here’s why I watch–why I’ve always watched–and why it’s worth thinking about. Neil Patrick Harris nailed it in last year’s opening number. For the kid out in the middle of nowhere, for the kid who didn’t know there was more to theatre than getting onstage in front of a crowd and memorizing words and maybe songs, for the kid who just wanted to make some magic happen and didn’t know how, this was a taste of that. Who are those people, why are they on stage? Oh, they wrote this play, this musical, they made the actors look like that, they lit the stage, they made the sounds that transported everyone from a room in Manhattan to the South Pacific or La Grande Jatte. How did they do that? Is that something I could do? Yes it is, kid.

By shunting the design awards off to commercial breaks or pre-show ceremonies–even the best score of a musical and the In Memoriam tribute–or dropping these awards all together, the Tonys are making good design invisible for all the wrong reasons.

Since I took some liberties with the original audio, here’s the 2013 opening number in its entirety. It makes me smile and laugh and choke up at the end every damned time. Yeah, I was that kid, too.

One thing to remember: using any of the #TonyAwards or #Tonys hashtags or tweeting at @TheTonyAwards account is unlikely to get much attention. Hashtags tied to awards events are often ignored in the days after the event, and accounts pinned to events are often outsourced to marketing firms. The accounts you want to reach are the official American Theatre Wing account and the Broadway League account–fill their timelines with the #tonycanyouhearme tag. That would be @TheWing and @TheBwayLeague.

Howard Sherman, executive director of the Theater Wing, said sound design had been under consideration as a category since he was hired five seasons ago.

“We want to reflect an evolution of the understanding of the sound designer’s role, both among artists and in the community at large,” Mr. Sherman said. “This is not an award for placing a microphone somewhere. It’s about the creation of an aural environment that impacts our relationship to a production, just like any other design.”